Bambi Got Fixed
What ties us together, blond or charred or ginger snappish, but a ribbon of asphalt? It winds on from that tunnel in Paris ten years ago today (so image-savvy the People's Princess, to bleed out internally while retaining her beautiful surface post mortem, une infante defunte truly worthy of Debusy's Splenda'd Pavanne) to the Jersey Turnpike: Up for Sale--Yours for the Low! Low! Price of your Mortal Soul! and 35 cents every fifteen miles or so. What ties us, M.I.A./Patti/PJ Harvey/Madonna/Fantasia, and You, my partner . . . You, La Migliora Fabbra with the Open Sesame secret to invoke sleep that I can't trick, seduce or bribe into sharing my bed.
What made Patti write? She wanted to be like Jo in Little Women: a tomboy who wasn't a "bull" and had lots of boyfriends (see the Unauthorized Biography). What sucker punched her?
“I was twelve years old when my mother took me inside and said, ‘You can’t be wrestling outside without a T-shirt on.’ It was a trauma in fact. I got so fucked up over it when my mother gave me the big word—that I was absolutely a girl and there was no changing it—that I walked out dazed on a highway with my dog, Bambi, and let her get hit by a fire engine.” (UB, 26)
My sheltie's name was Peter. I loved him but one afternoon I hit him over and over with a Madame Alexander Scarlet O'Hara doll I'd given my sister, because he had chewed on it while we were out and because the teethmarks in her pink plastic "skin" would not would not would not would not--
My dad slapped me as hard as he could. First one side, then the other. It stopped with me holding the doll in one hand and Peter's chain link collar in the other. My father's hand was raised and I could tell from his squeezed red face he wanted to hit me again and for once he had the perfect justification. My sisters and my mother were watching. The word hysterical was swarming the air like a hive of yellow jackets. No one had to say it. Peter's panicked ribs rose and fell. We were in the closet in my sisters' room, where the pile of clothes on the floor made a place to memorize everything you could see with your eyes closed. I think I went there then.
What made Patti write? She wanted to be like Jo in Little Women: a tomboy who wasn't a "bull" and had lots of boyfriends (see the Unauthorized Biography). What sucker punched her?
“I was twelve years old when my mother took me inside and said, ‘You can’t be wrestling outside without a T-shirt on.’ It was a trauma in fact. I got so fucked up over it when my mother gave me the big word—that I was absolutely a girl and there was no changing it—that I walked out dazed on a highway with my dog, Bambi, and let her get hit by a fire engine.” (UB, 26)
My sheltie's name was Peter. I loved him but one afternoon I hit him over and over with a Madame Alexander Scarlet O'Hara doll I'd given my sister, because he had chewed on it while we were out and because the teethmarks in her pink plastic "skin" would not would not would not would not--
My dad slapped me as hard as he could. First one side, then the other. It stopped with me holding the doll in one hand and Peter's chain link collar in the other. My father's hand was raised and I could tell from his squeezed red face he wanted to hit me again and for once he had the perfect justification. My sisters and my mother were watching. The word hysterical was swarming the air like a hive of yellow jackets. No one had to say it. Peter's panicked ribs rose and fell. We were in the closet in my sisters' room, where the pile of clothes on the floor made a place to memorize everything you could see with your eyes closed. I think I went there then.
posted by MM at 9:26 AM
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